Lungs
by ParlorGamesToMe
Summary: "The bareness of it all invokes an urge to hide her away, somewhere far from the hungry, lustful boys that surely lurk near. For someone so intelligent, why can't you decipher the right combination of letters? Apologies taste like rust on your tongue. You don't mean to rebuff her, but the words slice, and you find yourself wondering what she looks like below the skin."


You love Raven, you love your sister, really do love her, but the key word is sister**. Sister.**And when she comes into the room, all blue and scaled, you don't mean to hurt her. It's just that, well, she's your sister and you can't help but want to cover her up and keep her safe. Whatever dubiously maintained innocence she possesses, you can hardly let it trickle away. Soon, you feel, everything will spin away, drenched in madness, the Earth perilously wobbling on it axis.

What brother can be blamed for his love of a sister, you ask yourself. Her face, her blue visage that lurks behind, falls and even then you know you can't find all the right steps to take. You know she's beautiful, you've always known it, beautiful on the outside and core and every layer in between; but, again, she's your sister and you want only to shield her. The bareness of it all invokes an urge to hide her away, somewhere far from the hungry, lustful boys that surely lurk near. For someone so intelligent, why can't you decipher the right combination of letters?

Apologies taste like rust on your tongue. You don't mean to rebuff her, but the words slice, and you find yourself wondering what she looks like below the skin. If her bones are shining white, gleaming, or if they are another hue entirely. If the meat on those same bones resembles anything close to human. If her blood comes out red or is it somehow blue like the veins beneath your skin- just an optical illusion on you, but is the reality entirely disparate for her? You find something to fixate on besides her crestfallen face, trying to push her dismay to a neglected corner of your mind. So few corners of your mind are derelict, you soon unearth.

Even after she has left, the guilt lingers, but more pressingly, so do the questions. Though your love does not ink away- it is permanently impressed, the darkening stain upon your bones- you lay awake, always awake, where sleep dares not tread as your mind whirs with infernal commotion. You do not sleep.

The next night, the questions still have not departed from your rapacious mind.

Her skull dances before your eyes, the kaleidoscopically imposed colors varying and interchanging into a bewildering mass of brightness. The skull collapses in on itself, then stretches, patterned by invisible hands.

Two tiny balls of colored sunlight grow within the sockets, so radiant your own eyes twinge. They continue to roll, humming circles rotating at the speed of light. Faster and faster, they revolve until your mind cannot keep up with the speed. Green, then blue, then brown, then the deepest shade of red, and finally a striking yellow, they transfigure until you can barely keep track of the colors. Suddenly, their rapid rate amplifies but the tint no longer changes. Yellow, so very yellow, stuck at yellow, balls of sunshine radiating in their sockets. They whine with effort, a keening sounds that strikes your eardrums with an unenviable fervor.

So enraptured are you that the swiftly transmogrifying skeleton remains unnoticed by your captive eyes. The spine elongates. Tissue paper thin coverings of skin- a disconcerting mix blue and the dye of Raven's familiar disguise- spread across formerly meatless bones. Whorls of flesh spiral down arms and legs, swathing bones with insubstantial armor. It is only then that you can view her body, as the eyes drone, smoking. A fog of grey covers the figure, hiding it from your view as quickly as it came. You blow a hot breath of air, as if that will clear the tendrils of grey- no one can smell the smoke but you. You can smell it just fine, can't you, Charles?

At last, the air clears, acquiescing to your worried beating heart. A pool of red blood floats within her eye sockets. Tiny droplets slide down her skin, the strange amalgamation of colors that fills you with something unnamable.

No, you don't even want to go so far as to name it. Naming calls things into being, invokes demons, forces unneeded feelings deeper down your throat.

She walks towards you, unaware of her vicissitude. Her lips- not Raven's lips, you think, startling yourself at the treachery- stretch into a smile. Her teeth glimmer, reflecting light onto your face.

You instinctively inch back, tangling yourself within covers. The impact of your body against the terrifyingly solid headboard alerts you to your gruesome duplicity. You shriek. That hardly detains her; she meets the shriek with a howling laugh and lets the sound ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, down the halls, and you find yourself oddly powerless. Your mind decelerates, unwilling to work against her. Even then, it fights you, fights for Raven, for she is your sister, is she not? Sisters and brothers must stay together, the part of a thankfully convenient, prepackaged whole.

You are anything but gracious as she draws nearer. She clucks- so unlike Raven, not Raven, and you almost cannot remember her name, as if it has changed to something else in your absence. She never told you what her name was before. You are struck by need, an insistent query that blessedly almost blocks her from your sight.

"Oh, Charles." She sighs, her tone ragged, a voice so unlike her. You wonder where Raven has gone, if this changeling has snatched her away and replaced her so effortlessly. "One day, Charles, maybe you'll find this beautiful. He did."

And Erik is there, why is Erik there, suddenly in the room as if he has been there all along. He grins at you, and, incongruously, his teeth remind you of barbed wire. He creeps past you, into the-thing-that-looks-like-Raven's arms. Their upper limbs interweave into a mesh of hues and his lips meet hers, they meet hers, and she is or was your sister and her lips shouldn't be on his so passionately, no, they shouldn't; you don't need to see this, don't need to see her pleased in this way as she moans under his touch. These are not the things that brothers desire to view.

The sheets merrily tie you to the bed. It groans as they fall onto it, joining you in a manner that you wish they wouldn't. Then, they jingle, silver fabric clinking together and solidifying into interlocking links of metal.

You wonder where the chains have come from, the padlocked silver things that bind you to the bed. You tug futilely at the shackles. They refuse to yield, and then you wish your power lay not in your mind but in your pitifully feeble arms.

He laughs, "You're not leaving so soon." Then his hands move lower, and dear God, you do not want to see this illicit affair progress before your very eyes. You cannot scream, you cannot scream, struck mute, and your lungs dance within your chest, grappling for air. They pound against your rib cage.

No matter what you try, your powers cease to work, everything ceases to work. Your mouth tastes like rust again. Erik bites what-used-to-be-your-sister, the barbed wire in his mouth catching onto her flesh. The blood seeps out of your mouth and onto the chains.

"We were so hungry." The chains whisper, their voices straddling the line between eerie and reverent. "And you have fed us. Thank you, thank you. We will let you go, but remember, we will be hungry again so very soon, Charles." You bow ceremoniously to them, and then bolt as the mess of limbs on the bed moves together in a less than musical symphony.

You run down the hallway, past one door, pass two doors, past three, past four, and then no more. Your legs make the strides, but the scenery remains frozen in place. You run in an ever present sludge. It gleefully traps you nowhere, no, you are somewhere, and the name escapes you at the present moment, everything escapes you, falling through your fingers; or is that blood dribbling through the cracks? You go to wipe your hands against your pajamas, only to find yourself unclothed, so very bare, but mercifully unaccompanied.

Your eyeballs orbit within your skull, and the pounding motions against your head bring a new form of agony. Something splinters, you're positive, and only moments later do you realize it is your skull that is cracking apart. A cheekbone falls onto the pavement; when were you on pavement, why are you on pavement? A part of your chin joins it, sizzling in the sand, and by now, you do not even think to inquire as to why.

The gentle sensation of fingertips brushing your spine moves you to jerk your head backwards. A bit of your forehead is launched behind you. Still, your head doesn't turn all the way. An unseen force snaps it back to the front. The salty sea air greets you. The fingers trace up and down the bumps of your spine. You feel a tiny pinch, just fingernails, in the same area, but cannot satiate your curiosity as to why you feel the twinge. What would you give to uncover the face of the thing behind you?

And then something tugs, oh God, something tugs, and your body gives way. The clever hands draw your spine from your body. You crumple to the ground, limp and motionless, a pile of entrails and crushed bones and blood dripping into a messy lump on wet sand. Nothing holds you together anymore. Oh, God, what you would give never to know, to go back to before. The color yellow imprints itself onto your eyes, commandeering your sight with its sickly tint. You can't quite figure out why or even where it comes from.

The tide laps at the pile-that-was-you. Something cackles, your single ear can tell, but then the water envelops what-held-you-together and drags you back into the ocean. Your lungs wonder what it feels like to drown as they settle in the bed of the sea.

When you wake up, you wish you hadn't slept.


End file.
